


i can't see the other side of the world

by oldtune



Series: you are the keeper of your soul [1]
Category: Deltarune (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 14:26:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17123075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oldtune/pseuds/oldtune
Summary: no one can chose who they are.





	i can't see the other side of the world

* * *

.

Picture this.

You're in bed, curled up under the covers.

An indistinct but warmly familiar voice tells to wake up. You do.

You're a little bit muddled, still hazy from sleep, blinking away dreams that cling to your lashes.

The covers are slowly pushed off and you plant your feet onto the fuzzy carpet, avoiding the wooden floorboards because you know they'll be cold. The golden sunlight through your curtains tells you it's going to be beautiful day. And then you go to stand up and can't. You can't. Frozen in place so you can only look down at your hands.

Stop moving.

This is not your body.

 _It's mine_.

* * *

.

Picture this.

You wake up.

You're a little bit muddled, still hazy and chasing away dreams that nip at your heels and dig their teeth into the back of your neck. It's dark and cold. A voice echoes through the shadows, offering you a choice. A second chance. A way out.

You reach back, take the hand outstretched towards you and don't expect it to pull you under.

After all, you couldn't have known.

_Your choices don't matter._

* * *

.

Picture this.

It's morning.

The floorboards are cold but they're warm to the touch where the sunlight touches them. There are two people suddenly, uncomfortably close together and they're halfway through melting. muddling together in a twisting haze of pressing darkness and red light. They can't tell who they are –  _it's just you_  – until one of them reaches for their chest and curls a hand around their trembling red pulse.

The other sounds sick, gasping for breath and not breathing at the same time, curling into themself and stretching out to feel anything they can at the same time. They can feel where they're stretched thin to snapping, like a rubber band that's been pulled apart. So they let go.

It feels like they're overflowing, a cup filled to the brim with overbright, seething red. Rose petals spilling across the floor in waves. A heart pulled apart like sweet taffy and pulled together again while the taste of cherries spreads across their tongue. They're dizzy with it, the both of them but in between this, this strange drowning, they realize all storms are made of waves. There's an ebb and flow, a breaking point in the middle that they can both touch, a point where it's just them and –  _its only ever been you –_

They can catch their breath. Somehow. Their breathing evens out.

They edge out boundaries and selves in half-sketches, colors bleeding together behind bold lines, messy works in progress. Works in progress. It's allowed to be a mess.

They're both red, one blocky and sinking deep, the other translucent and fluttering in a motion halfway to flight. Control means nothing here when they can both circle each other with wire-sharpness and wrest movement from the hands of the other. It just turns out they're not interested in a fight.

They never have been.

They never will be.

* * *

.

Picture this.

There's a body and two hearts, two hearts and one body.

They beat in tandem, one red pulse after the other and it's almost delicate this balance they have.

And then it turns out they have to go to school and one of them takes the backseat with an unforeseen amount of relish. The other trips over their own two feet on the edge of the carpet and suddenly remembers what pain feels like. It's bad. They haul themselves up and follow muscle memory to the bathroom where they also rediscover blood and panic for a good several moments while a muffled laughtrack plays in their brain.

That's life isn't it.

* * *

.

Picture this.

It's been a week and they're spending the night staring up at the ceiling. Talking.

It's strange to hear their voice jump registers, scratchy and low, slow and smooth. One of talks like the words are fight, they hit snags in between letters and clamp up, fury coursing through them at this inability to articulate. The other talks in fits and starts, losing words to threads of thought that loop and twist until they can't remember where they were much less what they needed to say. The feeling of words stoppered up at the base of their throat, heavy tongue and clockwork chest tightening with impatience becomes even more familiar.

The feeling of having them loosen, hands moving carefully in conversation, slow breathing their way through communication until it feels less like trying to scream through a mouthful of glass shards and more like talking becomes a map. They can't find it with their eyes closed – yet – but they can find it. It's good.

* * *

.

Picture this.

They've got a phone in hand, camera wobbling slightly on the screen and the moon is a glowing lamp in the sky. The night air is cool and smells like roses. They're wearing two sweaters on top of each other because one of them wasn't enough and there's a scarf wrapped around their neck, looped twice for luck.

They move a little closer to the gates, try to find an angle where the moonlight falls perfectly through the dewdrops so they can catch the refraction. It's enough of a task to distract them from the itch under their skin, the tight feeling of bandages plastered all the way across their arms to the back of their hands. Later, they'll run their fingers across the bold colors and stripes and find a smile tucked into the corner of their mouth for safety. Send some of sort of feeling through the wire that isn't black tar and the way heavy gray clouds feels when they're expanding in their chest, pouring in cold and misery that leave no room for anything else.

That's later.

Right now they'll stand in a field of grass and get the perfect picture of roses under moonlight anyone has ever seen and they won't think of anything else.

(Later, another pair of hands will make them tea from a box of hibiscus leaves hidden way back in the cupboards and they'll think of roses in the sunlight, blooming bold and red. They'll want to show them when the weather changes and it'll be a thought, a feeling that settles warmly at the back of their tongue and melts down into far-away sweetness. They'll finish their cup and fall asleep to the slow beat of a soul taking flight.)


End file.
